


Try Again

by Kimmy



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Don't Like Don't Read, FIx It, M/M, Merry Christmas!, Pining, Time Travel, jalec secret santa, jss2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 21:18:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimmy/pseuds/Kimmy
Summary: When the worst thing happens, and Jace and Alec get deruned, the blonde is determined to fix it the only way possible... By seeking help from a warlock.





	Try Again

It’s a day like any other. They’re sparring in the courtyard, keeping in shape despite the downtime in mission. Jace is better at hand to hand but Alec practiced forever out of sheer determination to best his friend. In less than a second of distraction he has Jace pinned underneath him, both sweaty and faces inches apart.

Alec feels air leave his lungs, his heart beating rapidly at the closeness. Jace’s eyes momentarily flick to Alec’s lips and it’s just… too much.

_Too much._

Being too close, fighting those feelings for too long, wanting too much.

Alec isn’t thinking. He is always in overdrive, always overthinking everything, always careful, and yet one exhausting sparring session and the thrill of victory are enough to ruin years and reboot his brain for long enough he leans in, kissing Jace on the lips.

***

It feels like heaven. Jace has never kissed anyone before. He knows what people think. He knows many assume he sleeps around and he keeps up the cocky front, letting them think so. It’s easier.

He wonders if kissing anyone else would be like that but something tells him there’s more to it. He doesn’t know much about love but he knows there is more to it than kissing and he knows that he likes Alec a lot more than anyone else.

So when Alec jumps away from him as if burned and tries to run, Jace grabs his wrist and doesn’t let him.

“Wait.”

He can see Alec desperately wants to ignore him but he forces himself to sit down, eyes closed and face up, as if asking the heavens why he did what he did. Jace lets go of his wrist but doesn’t say anything. He’s stubbornly waiting for Alec to meet his eyes.

“Can’t we just forget it?”

When he finally looks at Jace his eyes are pleading and full of pain and Jace realizes he never wants to see that look on Alec again.

“Why?”

“Jace, we are _parabatai._ ”

And only then it sinks in.

_Oh. Shit._

***

They do it anyway. Alec keeps telling Jace how dangerous it is, why he kept it to himself. But then Jace kisses him again and they keep stealing kisses until one day, someone sees.

***

Magnus untangled himself from a wolf wrapped around him like an octopus and went to put a robe on before opening the door to finally silence the idiot who kept ringing the doorbell like the world was ending.

He thrust the door open with a bit more force than necessary, catching a blond guy with his finger halfway to the doorbell. At least he had the decency to look sheepish when Magnus raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

“Sorry. I just…”

Magnus could see it now. The man, maybe in early twenties, wasn’t rude, he was just frantic. He looked like a lost boy, beaten up and desperately looking for help but at the same time strangely… determined, as if he already found a solution.

When he looked at Magnus his double coloured eyes sparkled.

“Rumour has it you know the magic of time travel.”

Wordlessly, Magnus opened the door, letting the guy in.

“Where did you hear that?”

“It doesn’t matter. Can you send me back?”

Magnus sighed, motioning for them to sit. He wasn’t sure what to do. He wasn’t sure if the man in front of him was the right person to give the spell to. He wanted, desperately so, to try it out for years now, but it was not magic to be used lightly.

“What’s your story?”

“Please, just…”

Magnus stopped him.

“Tell me your story first. Then we can talk the possibilities.”

The guy looked like someone dumped a bucket of cold water on him.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m Jace.”

He extended his hand and Magnus took it, smirking slightly at the fact Jace only remembered his manners now. It could have been rude, but he seemed genuinely shaken.

“I was a Shadowhunter.”

“ _Was?_ ”

Magnus asked, looking over Jace’s clear skin. Probably deruned. But that wasn’t a punishment The Clave used often.

“Actually not just a Shadowhunter. A _parabatai_.”

Jace’s eyes were wide and pained, and suddenly Magnus understood. An offence that would be enough for The Clave to derune not just one person, but two. Despair of a man who lost everything. Determination to fix it the only way possible.

Magnus chose his words carefully, aware he was treading shaky ground, talking to a man drowning in pain.

“Have you considered trying to live your life as mundanes? Maybe being free of the Shadow World doesn’t have to be a curse…”

But when Jace looked at him, Magnus could see in his eyes that he made up his mind. And yet, his eyes were calm, reasonable, not ruled by panic. Magnus felt like he knew what he was doing.

“It’s not about that. I need to go back to tell myself to change things before we got into this mess. Before we became parabatai. Not to avoid us being deruned. Not to avoid the deruning but…”

Jace turned away, looking outside the window.

“...to spare him years of pain, of suppressing his feelings, years of unhappiness because of me only for him to get his whole life taken from him when I finally came around.”

With an understanding sigh, Magnus nodded.

***

“I agree.”

Jace turn around to find Alec standing behind him, twisting a hem of his shirt.

“You agree? To what?”

Jace wasn’t sure what was happening. Did he ask Alec a question and already forgot?

“The… The _parabatai_ thing. I agree. I want to be your parabatai.”

_Oh. That._

He forgot. He asked Alec to be his parabatai and Alec asked for time to think. And now Alec was agreeing to it. But Jace, Jace wasn’t sure anymore. He asked Alec to be his parabatai because he couldn’t imagine himself without Alec.

But there was this weird feeling… Like an insistent thought in his head, telling him to reconsider.

_It’s not parabatai you want to be with Alec._

“Alec…” He turned to the other boy, making eye contact. “What if I don’t want to anymore?”

***

_“So you haven’t done it before?”_

_“No. Are you sure you still want to do it?”_

_“Yes. You explained the risks. I want to take those risks. From what you said, it sounds logical. Guess there is only one way to find out if it works.”_

_“Just… remember to focus. On this one thing, one thought, that you want your younger self to know. Because that’s all that’s gonna be. When you go back, you go back. There won’t be that current you to give lectures. You will be a boy again, and you have to focus on one thought to put in that boy’s brain that will be enough to make him change the course of history.”_

_“It’s fine. Just… do it.”_

***

“What do you mean? You don’t want to be my parabatai?”

Alec looked like Jace just punched the air out of his gut, pale and almost as if he was about to faint. Panicked, Jace grabbed Alec’s arms to hold him, rushing to reassure his friend.

“No, Alec, that’s not what I mean! I’m sorry, I… Don’t think that. Never think that. I don’t mean to… It’s not that.” He stumbled over his words but stubbornly went on. “What if _parabatai_ is not what I want?”

He didn’t realize. Michael… Father always told him that to love is to destroy. Jace wasn’t sure exactly what love was, but Izzy told him all about crushes and _like-liking_ that was different from just liking.

Jace thought that since he liked Alec the most of everyone and couldn’t imagine ever being without him, that meant they should be parabatai. But there were other ways to explain why Jace liked Alec more than anyone else, right?

“But… I thought…”

Jace could see the confusion and a certain dose of hurt in Alec’s eyes, but he figured it was better to be honest than make a mistake he would regret.

“Then what do you want?”

Alec asked, almost challenging, and suddenly Jace felt like he knew the answer.

“It’s just… parabatai is for life. Parabatai means a lot and it should not be taken lightly. And I am not sure if parabatai is what we are meant to be. You are the most important person to me, and I don’t want to hurt you by becoming parabatai if it was to turn out in a few months or years that one of us regrets us.”

He could see the conflicting emotions in Alec’s eyes, and he knew they were mirrored in his own. In a way, his own words confused him, so much more thought through and mature than he knew he was, as if someone who knew better helped him understand.

“I don’t know if I want to be your parabatai, Alec. I thought that because I like you most, that’s what it means, right? But… You can like people different ways, can’t you? What if the fact I like you most doesn’t mean I want to be your parabatai? Maybe I want to be like your…”

Jace wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.

“Just a friend? Like… Best friend?”

Alec smiled, but there was something sad about it and Jace knew that wasn’t what he meant.

“No.” He shook his head with certainty. “Like. Like… I don’t know. Like... a boyfriend?”

It’s a word that felt strangely right, even though not one Jace ever really considered before. He just suddenly knew that was what he wanted, although he never realized _that’s_ what his feelings were.

“What do you think about that? Would you go on a date with me?”

The look on Alec’s face was really worrying, and the silence made Jace uncomfortable. Did he overstep? Alec looked a bit as if his brain rebooted.

“Alec?”

He prodded gently, and he was met with a hesitant smile.

“I… I mean, erm... Um, yeah, sure. Like, really?”

Jace laughed and caught Alec in a hug.

“Really.”

***

Jace sat up in their bed, gasping for breath. He could hear the rustling of the sheets as Alec clearly got woken up by his boyfriend.

“Jace?”

“I’m.” Jace swallowed around the lump in his throat and took a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m fine, sorry.”

He shifted around, leaning against the headboard, trying to calm his racing heart.

_Holy shit._

“Are you okay?”

Alec sat up next to him, looking at him with concern. He put his arm around Jace, letting the blonde’s head fall onto his beanstalk’s shoulder and gently caressed his arm, trying to help him relax. Alec was a complete mother hen ever since Clary stumbled into their life and the whole mess brought back Jace’s difficult past.

Jace pretended not to like it, but they both knew after being kidnapped and learning his father was a genocidal maniac, he really appreciated the comforting attention.

“Another nightmare?”

Jace wasn’t sure what to say.

“Not quite.”

With a sigh, he turned a bit, leaning his forehead against Alec’s and looking him deep in the eyes.

“I just remembered something.”

Alec didn’t say anything, waiting for Jace to elaborate.

“I think I went back in time.”

Alec didn’t pull back. He didn’t call Jace crazy or claim it’s impossible. He listened as Jace explained how they became parabatai. How Alec spent years in the closet and hiding his feelings, how for years Jace thought he was unlovable. He listened when Jace told him about that day when they finally got together and how just a few days later they had been caught and deruned.

He didn’t say a word when Jace explained that he went to High Warlock of Brooklyn for help.

“It was today. In that… alternate, past timeline, I went to Magnus today. That’s why I remembered.”

Alec still didn’t say a word, just tugged Jace to lay down again and held him close.

“That’s why… That’s why you didn’t want to be my parabatai. When Magnus told you to focus, you focused on not allowing us to go through with the bond.”

Jace nodded, still too shocked to voice the affirmation. His mind was having trouble processing the onslaught of memories.

“What was it like?”

Alec’s question caught Jace by surprise and he looked up in confusion.

“I mean the bond. You… You remember what it was like. Being parabatai. Do you regret it? Giving it up?”

Jace could hear the _Was I worth it?_ in Alec’s voice. The doubt if the love Jace held for him was superior to a magical bond they could have shared. Jace wanted to laugh.

He turned around, wiggling in Alec’s embrace until he lay on his side, head pillow on his arm and eyes focused on the warm brown hazel of boyfriend’s worried ones.

“I don’t regret it. The bond… It was great. But we were miserable, Alec. We were never meant to be parabatai. The secrets kept us apart and weak when we were supposed to support each other. And _parabatai_ … It’s not about the magic. It’s about the emotions people share. Even without the bond, I’m not losing anything, because magic or not you are my strength and you make me better. Being with you like this, being _yours_ , it’s better than any magic, it’s _the best_.”

Alec’s eyes were slightly glassy as he offered Jace a weak smile and leaned in for a kiss.

“I love you, Jace. Nothing can change that.”

“I love you, Alec, _parabatai_ or not.”

***

Magnus untangled himself from a young latino wrapped around him like an octopus and went to put a robe on before opening the door to finally silence the idiot who kept ringing the doorbell like the world was ending.

He thrust the door open with a bit more force than necessary, catching a blond guy with his finger halfway to the doorbell. At least he had the decency to look sheepish when Magnus raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. Judging by the runes, he was clearly a Shadowhunter.

“Sorry. I just…”

Magnus frowned in annoyance at the cocky grin the blonde was sporting. What the hell did Nephilim think, coming at the crack of dawn (okay, maybe it was noon but _still_ ) and probably about to make demands?

“Rumour has it you know the magic of time travel.”

Magnus was just about to close the door in the guy’s face, deciding it wasn’t the kind of person to trust with the spell, but the blonde put his hand on the door.

“Chill. Sorry for waking you up. I just thought you’d appreciate knowing it worked.”

Intrigued, Magnus opened the door wider.

“Come in.”

It was strange, having a Shadowhunter explain his own spell to him, hearing that it worked despite not remembering it. Magnus noted every word, mind working full force and his brain doing a triumphant dance knowing he actually made time travel possible in a sense, when the blonde’s phone rang.

Jace had the volume set up high enough Magnus was able to hear without even trying to eavesdrop.

“Hey, angel, I just had this strange realization about what you told me about the whole time travel business.”

Magnus smirked watching how the Shadowhunter’s double coloured eyes widened with anxiety. The boy was clearly in trouble with his boyfriend and Magnus was enjoying the show.

“Yeah, Alec?”

“You said Magnus wasn’t sure if the spell would work, right?”

Jace hummed affirmatively, gulping.

“But you took the risk anyway. Even though we both survived the deruning. We were mundanes, but we weren’t hurt, right?”

“No…”

Magnus suppressed a giggle at how much like a deer caught in the headlights Jace looked.

“Okay. Can’t wait for you to come home, babe.”

And although Alec’s voice was sweet as sugar, the blonde was white as a sheet as he hung up. Magnus was glad the spell worked, but damn, he could see the boyfriend’s point. Whatever was waiting for him, the blonde had it coming.

“You don’t happen to have a place to hide me, huh?”

With a laugh and a grin, Magnus happily shooed a kicked puppy out of his flat. He had his own puppy, or well, a wolf cub, to take care of.

And to think he once considered himself a cat person...


End file.
